unauthorized use of my phone# from city jail

[Chris Copley]

What is the name of your state? Oregon

I received a collect call from the Portland Justice Center from an incarcerated unknown. I accepted the call. It was from a woman named Nikki. She said she got my phone number by looking on an attorney's note pad, and called to ask if I would call her mother and boyfriend and tell them she's in jail. To begin with, there is no reason an attorney would have my number. I know of no one who is incarcerated. I want to know how she got my phone number and to whom I should report this. I never called the people she asked me to call. I received another call from the justice center but would not accept it. This is weird.

 

[CavemanLawyer]

Its entirely possible that she read the phone number off his pad incorrectly and you have no connection to that attorney or any case. Phone numbers are not exactly public information if you choose to keep them private, but they aren't legally protected either. If someone discovers your phone number there is no law from preventing them from giving that number out to any number of people, so long as they aren't doing it with some malicious purpose, and there is nothing preventing someone from calling your number that they found so long as they don't violate any other law (ex: call to harass, annoy, threaten, violate debt collection practice, etc...)

I know you feel violated but you shouldn't accept collect calls from unknown people and now you know not to accept any more calls from this Nikki.

 

[Just Blue]

Call the Justice Center...

 

[JETX]

I received a collect call from the Portland Justice Center from an incarcerated unknown. I accepted the call. It was from a woman named Nikki. She said she got my phone number by looking on an attorney's note pad, and called to ask if I would call her mother and boyfriend and tell them she's in jail. To begin with, there is no reason an attorney would have my number. I know of no one who is incarcerated. I want to know how she got my phone number and to whom I should report this. I never called the people she asked me to call. I received another call from the justice center but would not accept it. This is weird.

This is a very common SCAM!!!

They will have you dial *72 then the number that they give you. When you dial that *72, you open your line to their using YOUR phone to their long distance calls. Check your phone bill!!

"In a new(ish) variant of a scam that’s been around for ages, prisoners at a Dallas-area correctional facility have been calling numbers — collect, as all prison calls are — and getting their unsuspecting victims to hand over control of the phone by dialing *72. The prisoners then proceed to run up ridiculous charges on the victims’ phone bills."

"Beware of the following schemes:
Star-7-2, billing back to you: You receive a call from a stranger posing as a telephone technician or telling you that he has been arrested for driving with a suspended license and is in jail - or is in a situation that requires your immediate help. "I need to reach my wife and tell her what happened so she can pick up our two kids. Would you dial *72 and then her number?"

Star-7-2 is a custom feature for call forwarding. When the customer dials *72 followed by a telephone number, it activates the call forwarding feature causing all your incoming calls to ring at another number. At the end of the other line - whether calls have been forwarded to a landline, a cell phone or a payphone - the original caller's partner-in-crime is able to accept all collect and third-party calls, while telling your own legitimate callers that they have the wrong number. You get billed for all calls made because your number is the one from which they are forwarded. This ingenious scam, which even overrides cell phones inability to get collect calls, may go on for several days before you become aware it has occurred.

*72, Not for you: Do not accept collect calls from individuals you don't know, regardless of who they claim to be. Also, never activate *72, the call forwarding feature, unless you yourself wish to have calls forwarded elsewhere."
http://www.corp.att.com/news/2004/03/31-12991

http://www.snopes.com/inboxer/scams/forward.asp
http://www.consumeraffairs.com/news04/2005/call_forward_scam.html

 

[Zigner]

It is about 99% MORE likely that "Nikki" dialed the number randomly. As was mentioned previously, don't accept collect calls from people you don't know. And, if you do accept one, once you realize that you don't know the person, HANG UP.